All that we See or Seem
by FaylinnNorse
Summary: The dawn didn't last long, but somehow, she would. Sleeping Beauty. Oneshot.


So this is a jumbled mess of run-on sentences and changing tenses and similes that maybe don't quite make sense, but I like it anyways. And I hope you do too! Remember to review!

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She didn't remember when she was first told she was going to die. She felt like she'd always known, and maybe she always had. It certainly wasn't anything astounding. Just a known fact, a flaw, a defect in her. Something had just gone wrong, and there was nothing to be done about it. _(only she was going to defy them, the silent voices that silently echoed of death and dark and nightmare but she was Aurora and that meant dawn and sunshine and flowers and she was going to live live live—)_

It was a curse, actually, though no one spent much time bothering with the idea anymore. A curse was a curse—was a curse was a curse was a curse—and there was nothing to be done about it. Spinning wheels were outlawed, of course, but that was all.

She often suspected that she was really named Aurora because the dawn was so short. She watched it sometimes, rising early _(or staying late because she couldn't sleep, wouldn't sleep in that long, dark space called night where it was silent and dark like that terrible monster that can't be seen but she just knows it's there waiting and going to devour her in its giant jaw)_ and looking through her window out at the horizon. And the dawn, she realized at seven years old, was really just a singular moment in time when the first, faint spark of the sun leaps over the horizon to greet the world.

But then it's gone so fast like desserts and like the wild roses she picked that wilted over night and the butterfly she tried to keep in a jar and they're all gone forever. But the funniest thing, or the most awful thing is that the rest of the world goes on just like any other time, like it never even happened, it just rolls along, and no one ever realizes that first ray of sunlight is dead when it hits the sky.

And suddenly, she feels smothered by so much daylight and draws the curtains over the window and hides under her blankets.

She knew it, and her mother and father knew it, and the old servant that worked in the fields knew it. She could see in their eyes, all their sad, sorry eyes, casting sidelong glances that said, _Enjoy yourself while you can, love. 'Cause it won't last long._

And sometimes she felt like the flowers in the fields knew, and they laughed at her as they swayed and danced in the breeze. _(Sometimes she had nightmares that were too silly to mention even to herself, where walls of flowers drew up around her and tried to swallow her in an array of colors like a rainbow, like a prism that her tutors tried to tutor her about—about light and the way it absorbed things and reflected things like a mirror that showed her what she really looked like and sometimes it terrified her, because within all the bright colors and life was dark and silence and death death death death...)_

She was still expected to be a perfect princess. She attended dinners and banquets and balls and tea parties and garden parties, and there were really so many kinds of parties for a young lady to attend. Sometimes she wondered what the use of it all was, and sometimes she liked it, because she could at least pretend that she was normal, and there was nothing at all huge and black and hanging imminently in her future. There was nothing but parties and teatime and gossip and princes for her.

And there were all of these things, but they weren't quite what they ought to have been, for there was an air of solemnity over it all, and she had a feeling that rather too much of the gossip revolved around her, and the princes were so awkward, shuffling their feet and mumbling words she could never quite make out.

But then there was _him_. He really wasn't much, according to society. The fifth son of a royal family that ruled over a small, inconsequential kingdom. Compared to her, he was nothing. _(Only he was something, because he was alive alive and he treated her like she was something living too, instead of half corpse like she'd almost begun to think she was already)_

They said he was ordinary. If he'd had any special ability for leadership, he could have taken his kingdom at will, but instead he did nothing much. _(besides visiting a half-dead princess who would be full-dead in a few years, who was not much for conversation because she liked to stare out windows and tended to look like she was going to faint whenever the sun was shining too bright—__**smothered smothered smother**__—)_

"Aurora, do you think you're really going to die like they say you will?"

She could have choked, or fainted, or screamed, or slapped him, but she didn't. She laid back against the grass and stared silently at the blue sky. The wild flowers danced around her. _(Defy them, defy it, there's no death, no darkness, no silence deafening in her ears like an avalanche pounding down a mountain and crushing her beneath it but she was going to live...live...)_ The flowers laughed at her. "Yes," she said positively.

"Oh," he said and made his hands a pillow beneath his head.

She looked at him. His eyes were blue like the sky but not so terrible. _(sometimes she was afraid to look at the sky because it was so calm and quiet like the ocean in the deep and she heard that people drowned there because they couldn't breathe and maybe they just sat there and fish came and swam around them and pushed at them but they never ever moved)_ "Do you think I'm going to die?" she asked.

He looked at her with his sky ocean water blue but not terrible eyes and shrugged. "I don't know. I suppose so. Unless you break it somehow."

With a few words, he unlocked everything that was inside of her and reminded her that she was Aurora and she was going to live because it was more than just a dream that she wished upon a star and never told anyone, it was her and she was Aurora and that meant dawn and—and she was going to _**live.**_

But then it was that fateful day that hung imminently over her like a thunderstorm that prophesied the end of the world, but not the whole world, just her world where there was sunshine and flowers and sky that all sometimes frightened her but not always and there was him.

First, of course, there was a new dress and a pretty updo for her hair and flowers to lace through it, so she would be beautiful. Then there was sweet food and fresh fruit and things from far away that she'd never really even thought of dreaming about, but she liked it, a little bit, and there was dancing with him, and they smiled at each other. She wondered if hers looked like a cloud about to break apart into rain, but she kept it plastered on, and his was like—like, well. Pleasant. She, of course, couldn't marry him. He was a fifth son. _(but secretly, his smile was like the not quite sunny days where it was bright but didn't strangle her, or that one, solitary, single moment when that first ray of light flew brazenly over the dark horizon—and stopped—only it never really stopped, but his smile stayed stuck there forever)_

She went upstairs to freshen up, but there was a strange stairwell there, one she didn't recognize, and she followed it up and up to the top so high with a sickening, strangling, smothering feeling in her stomach until she reached the top and—

"Hello, Aurora."

The woman spinning wasn't frightening. She had a kind smile, and the spinning wheel wasn't terrifying, even if it did have a sharp point. "I...I don't want to learn to spin," she heard herself say in a small voice. But it didn't matter. Nothing mattered. She stepped forward, raised a finger.

_(Defy it defy it died into silence where there was nothing but silence and dark and death and nightmares but she couldn't scream, couldn't raise an alarm just raised a trembling finger)_ She pricked her finger on a spinning wheel needle and fell to the floor.

It wasn't like she thought it would be. But then, in some ways it was. It was silent but not dark. There were bright splashes of color, of flowers and sunshine and sky but it was all terrible but it was wonderful but it was wrong. The flowers danced and swayed but she felt no wind on her skin or...anything at all. There was nothing here, but there was everything, and it was all silent and dead, and she was dead too, only she wasn't, because she was here, but she saw the drop of blood on finger as she stood in a silent field of bright silent colors where the sun was too bright but it wasn't warm and it smothered her, and she started to cry, only she couldn't cry, because she was dead, only maybe not and—and—it was all too terrifying to look at, so she dropped to the ground and buried herself in the deepness of her blankets that weren't really there and slept.

It was a dream inside a dream where there was darkness and blackness and monsters waiting to devour her whole but she still couldn't see them and she lay there silent and—and then it was water; she was under leagues and leagues of deep sky blue sea and fishes swam around her in swarms and bumped into her and she watched them but she couldn't move away and she was so frightened, so terrified and it was too awful to look at, so she closed her eyes tighter and tighter.

But then it was brighter colors exploding in front of her eyes in fluorescent orange and pink and red and yellow and they laughed and laughed so loud and awful and they were flowers, all kinds of flowers wrapping around her and growing and growing like great giants who never stopped growing until they were as big as planets that her tutors had tried to tell her about, as big as suns burning million miles away and—oh, the sun.

And she woke up, only she wasn't really awake either, just back in the silent land where the sun burnt bright and smothered her. Then it set unexpectedly into the horizon and left her in the dark, only it wasn't really so dark, just a bit dark and dull and silent and she wondered if there were monsters here with huge jaws that were hiding just outside her vision.

"Well, I guess it did come true." He sat beside her on the grass, smiling.

She jumped up and then sat back down and wasn't quite sure if it was supposed to be surprising that he was here or not. "Why...why?"

He shrugged. "You looked lonely."

And that was all there was to it. She didn't ask him any more questions. She didn't think she would get any answers and somehow, it didn't matter anymore. At least she wasn't alone. She hated being alone because it felt like suffocating and death, because she could scream, but no one would even hear her, and it was like not existing because no one ever knew what happened to her when she was alone, and she wanted to exist, wanted to be alive, but she felt like she'd never really existed at all because her whole life had been built up to that one singular moment where she had stopped existing, and she just wanted to be real for once.

She looked down at her hands, and they were trembling like little frightened moths that she used to watch flutter in the darkness and land at her window where they stayed fluttering all night, but in the morning they were dead and so still like they were made of paper and with the way they were moving so fast, it was like she could see through them and they weren't really even there. She looked at him and wondered if he was really there at all and her lips were trembling, too, her pretty pink lips that he'd never ever kissed and suddenly she felt like crying because it was all all over and that was the only thing that was really real.

"You...you aren't even here, are you?" she asked him in a choked voice.

"Oh, I am," he said. "But only because you want me to be."

That didn't make her feel better, but she didn't cry, couldn't cry, and she only looked at her finger and the bright drop of red blood still on it and wondered if she would bleed forever.

"I'm sorry," he said.

She looked at him and looked away.

And sometimes he was there, and sometimes he wasn't, and sometimes she dreamed terrifying dreams where nothing really happened, but there was a monster here—somewhere here—and it had huge teeth and claws and wanted to tear her to pieces, but she never really saw it, just heard it growling in her sleep with a deep, guttural sound, and sometimes she could feel it breathing on her neck, and she screamed and sat up and he was sitting there with her, holding her hand but his fingers felt like nothing, but she gripped them even tighter.

"Are you going to save me?" she asked him with tears streaming down her cheeks.

He shook his head, and when she screamed at him, he only said, "I'm sorry, Aurora. I can't. Sometimes...we have to let go of what we love and embrace what we have."

"And what do I have?" she asked, her voice raised in a shriek. "There's nothing here but death!"

He shrugged like carefree boys shrug, but there was sorrow in his eyes. And finally it hit her.

"You're leaving," she said tonelessly.

He nodded.

She let go of his hands and realized she wasn't holding anything but air. He was gone. She wondered if he had ever really been there at all.

The blood on her finger stayed there, one single drop. If she squeezed it more came out, but she didn't squeeze it. Secretly _(though she wasn't sure who she was keeping secrets from anymore)_ she was afraid that if she squeezed it too much it would just keep coming out and pouring out all over until she was completely stained scarlet and all her veins had been drained and she shriveled up like a dead plant—like those roses that wilted in her rooms so very long ago.

Soon afterward, she stopped living in her dreams. There were a few more nightmares where the flowers surrounded in her like hugely intimidating walls, bearing down on her and coming closer and closer until they were cutting into her skin and choking her like great snakes wrapped around her belly, squeezing out her air until she was flattened like a sheet of paper, and she let them come because she was so so tired...so tired...

_In the woods, there's a bunch of roses all around a castle and in the castle there's a tower where vines creep up the walls, and in the tower, there's a princess, and she's **beautiful. **But, you know, there's not much use in trying to wake her, because men have tried before you, and nobody ever makes it and they all die and lie hung up in those thorns like flies caught up in a spider web that never ever move._

She could feel him reaching out for her even before he got there. She felt when he thundered across the land on his fine steed, shining like the moon on the dark nights when she watched the sky, until he reached the thorns. He was coming to find her, but she wasn't sure she wanted to be found here in her bed of flowers that had once strangled her to sleep, but she was safe here and sort of comfortable except when she wasn't and when she wanted to scream no one heard her because she wasn't really real, but he was coming like he was coming to see a living girl, not an imaginary one.

The flowers reached out for him, rising up like giants as they had for her, tearing at his skin, scarring him as they'd scarred—killed so many others, but she hadn't seen it happen to them, and she wasn't sure why, but she didn't care very much. And maybe it was better if they did kill him because she wasn't very real, and if she opened her eyes the world would somehow stop being real too, and if she touched him, then he wouldn't be real either because she couldn't imagine being real anymore because she lived in choking flowers that hid her from everything else, and they were frightening, but maybe the quiet was peaceful even when it screamed in her ears , and it was the only thing she knew anymore.

And the flowers hurt him, and she could feel it, but maybe it was good riddance because he wasn't _him_ and she'd wanted him but he was gone so gone gone gone, and she hated that, but she didn't feel like she hated anything anymore, because she wasn't real, and it was all so easy to not be real and to not exist and to just lay there in dark and silent dreams that swallowed her, enveloped her in nothingness...but they were _hurting_ him. Scratching and tearing and biting and strangling and she could feel it all and remember the excruciating pain and he screamed out, _Please, I only want to find her—the one I've been searching for. Please just let me find her, and then you can take me, if you must._

And he reached for her so far and so long and so hard that he pulled her out of nothing, out of air and dust and the stuff of dreams and nightmares that sparkles like fairy dust only fairy dust wasn't real, but she was almost real again, and she stood across from him in that silent place where the colors were bright and terrifying and swallowing, and she'd been swallowed by them already, but now she was living in it again instead of nonexisting in a tangle of it, and...he was so beautiful it hurt and it wasn't about his eyes or his smile, it was just the way he looked at her like she was real, like she was the only real thing he'd ever seen, and he was so real and alive that she was afraid to touch him for fear she'd kill him or turn him into something like her, something that didn't really exist.

"It's you," he said at last. "I've been searching, reaching...what's your name?"

"Aurora," she replies, trembling and looks at the ground where the vibrant green grass grows up under her toes, and it should feel fresh and alive, but it doesn't feel like anything, or maybe she doesn't feel like anything, and she looks back at him and he's so brave and valiant and princely, and she could maybe love him, but...but..._(I used to love someone, but I don't anymore, but it wasn't really his fault, and I guess it just wasn't meant to be, but please, __**please**__ don't break my heart) _

"Save me," she says suddenly, in a voice that's only a whisper but her whisper echoes like a rockslide, like a river pounding against the rocks, and she's suddenly terrified because she doesn't know if she really wants to leave, and she doesn't know if she really can leave, but she does want to, because...because once upon a time, there was princess named Aurora because she was the dawn, and she was going to live.

He nods, a slight nod, a hesitant nod, but it's somehow more sure than anyone she's ever seen before, and he smiles at her then, and he says, "I promise," and reaches out to touch her arm, and she can feel his hand, and she hasn't felt anything in so so long, but then everything disappears again, and she knows she's trapped in the flowers that wrap around her and choke her and smother her, and the thorns come at him again and reach for him to hold him back, to stop him somehow, but she wills them, screams at them to let him through.

It's a battle, but he chops through them, slashing and hacking at them with his sword like he's fighting for his life, and he is, but he's also fighting for her life and that means that she has a life and maybe it's only hanging in the balance, but it's there somehow and she almost almost exists again, and she _will_ exist, she'll live somehow, somehow. _(please if you can just get here and pull me out of this nothing, please, please, I need you)_

He comes, tearing through the thorns, lighting through the darkness to where she is, but she's smothered in flowers that swallow her in darkness, and she knows there's a monster that ate her existence a long, long time ago, and no can get through that, no one can bring her back, because she's so gone gone gone and she was supposed to be gone a long time ago, and sometimes you just can't stop fate.

But she feels something, a slight warmth tingling on her face and a soft brush against her lips and suddenly...suddenly they all let go, all of the darkness and the flowers that swallowed her whole fall away, and she can breathe without feeling them tightening their hold on her and trying to stop her and smother her, and her eyes open, and there's flowers and thorns everywhere, and a man is standing in front of her with black and purple bruises on his face and blood dripping from deep scratches on his skin, but he's there and she reaches for him and touches his hand and he feels so very real.

She sits up then and looks at herself and the walls crumbling around her that had once been her home, but it had never been much of a home before, but now it looks like it could be one, even with all the crumblingness and vines and flowers creeping over walls and floor and ceiling like the wilderness had taken to living with her, and it might not have been what she wanted, but it was what she had, and she was going to embrace it, somehow.

She looks at him, her prince who saved her and pulled her into existence, and she smiles, taking his hand again. "I'm Aurora," she says again. "What's your name?"

_(Because sometimes, the dawn comes back again.)_


End file.
